[AFS3-std] Submitting a draft RFC as Experimental

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

--On Tuesday, February 01, 2011 12:00:05 PM -0500 Derrick Brashear=20
<shadow@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I don't believe this document has ever been submitted to the RFC-Editor.
>> =C2=A0I don't think it should be until we actually consider it a =
"standard".
>> =C2=A0IIRC, part of the goal was to minimize the burden we place on the
>> RFC-Editor.
>
> I assume we do now consider it ratified, and thus it should be
> submitted. Should I do
> so now, and what should the status be? Currently the document (with
> the ratified text
> explaining implicit and explicit added) is marked to be draft-08, but
> I don't know what the
> next step should be.

The way I read Simon's document, we have three states:

- Documents start out in "draft" state, which means they are still
  under development; this includes both documents representing
  proposals from individual participants and documents the group
  is working on (really, the line there is fuzzy at best; we have
  no formal "adoption" step and IMHO don't need one).

  This has nothing to do with being an internet-draft, which is
  about having a particular format and being archived and
  distributed in a particular way.  It also has nothing to do
  with the IETF's "Draft Standard" status, which is a step on
  the way to becoming an Internet standard.

- When the group has formed a consensus that a document is done and
  should eventually become a standard, its status is changed to
  "experimental", reflecting the fact that we don't want to call
  something finished that in fact has never been implemented or
  tested.  Again, this has nothing to do with the "Experimental"
  status attached to RFC's, which generally denotes a document
  that actually describes an experiment, or at least a protocol
  that is the subject of experimentation.

- Once a protocol has been fully implemented, tested, and we are
  satisfied that it is sufficiently mature, its status is changed
  to "standard".  This, again, is distinct from the IETF's
  "Standard" -- we don't get to define Internet standards.


Again according to Simon's document, standard" documents are submitted as=20
RFC's (with status "Informational"); "draft" and "experimental" documents=20
are distributed as internet-drafts.  This is because an "experimental"=20
document is by definition not mature, and may be expected to change as a=20
result of problems found during implementation and testing.  The process of =

publishing an RFC takes a while and is a substantial amount of work for the =

RFC Production Center.  We want to limit the amount of load we create.

-- Jeff